worth noting that there’s evidence both ways… tumor cells may like it too:
- Loo et al. 2015 found color cancer cells can use it as fuel and blocking the creatine cut metastasis in mice [0]
- zhang et al 20921 found it promoting mouse colon and breast cancer models [1]
not an expert in any way, but i’m guessing it depends on cancer type and there doesn’t seem to be human data either way. as a cautious person w a lot of familial cancer, i cycled off after i looked into it.
This is such a crazy substance. I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture since it helps building muscle mass. Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not, it helps replenish ATP so I will be able to give the extra-push when working out, I thought.
What is blowing my mind though is that at $dayjob my team is going through a crazy crunch to deliver a very strategic project and some of us are pushing 10-12h days often. I'm in hour 12 today for the second day in a row, and my head is not tired at all. Turns out the brain also uses a lot of ATP too, specially during demanding cognitive tasks so I guess it is creatine that is keeping the engine running smoothly even after so many hours.
I will like once every week or two have a poor night sleep. These days I take twice the dose and I don't feel like I'm sleep deprived at all. Feels like cheating! And apparently no side effects at all so far. Well, maybe I'm working too much.
Mind that, while the "creatine high dose to fight drowsiness" hack works and has no side effects (other than upset stomachs), the lost sleep still does it thing. You don't notice day to day but it will catch up to you eventually in many bad ways.
Definitely! I would not recommend it to make up for lack of sleep for extended periods of time.
One of the things I'm trying to do better lately is to have a good sleep hygiene. Sun in the eyes early in the morning, no caffeine for the first 60 waking minutes of the day (adenosine absorption period), no screens 2 hours before bed and whatnot. Still, some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps
The overall fitness is going to definitely have a positive effect on the perceived energy levels (my Vo2 max is at its highest ever). On the other hand, I have been very fit at other times in my life but have never experienced this "my head can just go on" feeling before. I used to take conscious breaks, do NSDR between meetings and other energy-replenishing tricks because I __needed__ them. It feels like now I don't
Results: CrM supplementation without exercise training and diet intervention increased lean tissue mass, strength, and muscular endurance while promoting favorable changes in selected blood lipids, HbA1c, and selected markers of cognitive function and memory. Creatine supplementation during an exercise and weight-loss diet intervention increased lean tissue mass, promoted a greater reduction in body fat percentage, and improved muscular strength, endurance, and selected markers of cognitive function and memory. Supplementation was well-tolerated.
Conclusion: CrM supplementation with and without exercise and diet intervention may help middle-aged and older adults maintain muscle mass and strength while favourably affecting selected markers of health and cognitive function. Individual cognitive and biomarker findings should be interpreted as exploratory.
>I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture / Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not
And how do you know it's the creatine and not ...taking up CrossFit and the benefits to energy and cognitive function exercize brings?
If you would, please explain or point me to the material where you get your higher dosage recommendation. (I always heard and understood proper dosage to be 5–7.5g/day, 10g/day at the most. I’d like to correct my error if I’m mistaken.)
<10g is the correct dosage for the non-mental benefits
But inversely, unless you actually go above 10, eg 15... The blood saturation isn't enough for your brain to take advantage of it.
But there is very little studied about sustained use of such a dosage.
It's safe enough for anecdotes of people doing it for years and not having issues - but despite others claiming that it's well studied, it's really not - at least not with dosages above 5g in humans.
I’m 45 and work out a lot and feel this way without creatine. To the point that this makes me worry it would exacerbate my existing sleep issues (I literally never feel sleepy, I feel exactly the same 24 hours a day).
Some people report less GI distress with creatine HCL but it’s much more expensive.
The GI issues are caused by the creatine absorbing water. This causes your gut to have more water than usual as it follows the creatine through the works… which causes… urgency.
The effect diminishes after you’ve been taking a regular dose for a while, even with just monogydrate (not HCL).
Some people say HCL causes less distress because it doesn’t draw water as much. Others argue that defeats the purpose of taking it.
Monohydrate is studied to death and proven effective, HCL not so much.
The studies I've seen from HCl claim it's more bioavailable too, so you only need 1/3 the dosage compared to honohydrate. That makes the cost pretty comparable.
But otherwise, I'd agree that monohydrate has significantly more research behind it and I'd default to that if it's tolerable.
Creatine is one of the few if not the only supplements we actually know work. But with that said, my experience is that the bump is there but not world changing. Although it could be placebo, I don't think so because the first time I started taking it I noticed something but didn't make the connection because I noticed it playing basketball and not as much lifting. I could just sprint a lot easier. I recently started taking it again and again I noticed I can sprint easier and not be as spent. Of course you can improve by simply working out regularly, but IMHO the bump you get is obvious.
> Creatine promotes cancer metastasis through activation of Smad2/3
Tldr is basically that creatine helps body cells (in rats) to grow. Regardless wherever they're bad (cancer) or good (muscle). At least that's how I understood that study the last time I came across it. So probably stop using creatine when you've a cancer that's growing. Or its liable to use the creatine to turbocharge it's growth
Thankyou!! I'm sure if you have experience in the medical space this sort of thing seems obvious, but to me (non-medical), the original phrasing was so confusing. Your explanation makes sense.
I started taking a scoop of the Creatine Hydrate from Costco every afternoon because why not. Wife had bought it and the bag was sitting right there.
I honestly don't know whether it made a difference. Sleep didn't get worse, no noticeable metabolic effects. Possibly the "perma tired muscles" I've been suffering from increasingly since about age 57 (I'm an active cyclist) have gotten a bit better, with <50% of days affected rather than >90% last year, but even that is subjective.
If "taking the stuff" means "more uptake" (does it?) and there are other beneficial effects, bring it on.
I can concur on the short-term benefits for longer sets as well as the shorter recovery. Creatine is just one of those no-brainer supplements.
It's safe, cheap, and long-term-study proven to be extremely effective.
You will want to increase your daily hydration (at least for otherwise healthy men, a good sign is that you're "peeing clear") as Creatine does increase water retention.
any recommendation for tendon/joint pain? I'm in my early 30s, and try to lift regularly, but my joints/tendons seem to be the limiting factor when lifting, and not really muscle tiredness/soreness
As it's relevant to the sport I practice and just came back from armwrestling training I'd like to randomly comment: Armwrestling clubs have a LOT of people with tendon pain and injuries. The general approach to recovery and building tendon strength (beside lifting heavy) is to do static holds of 10 seconds+ of light to medium weight. Often paired with very large sets (50+ reps) of _extremely light_ weight; lifting almost nothing, just to get the blood through the tendon. You should not feel sore at all in either movement. The idea being that blood gets into tendons through movement. As for static holds; tendons expand during these static holds, so the idea is that they can then absorb more nutrients... Or something like that; I'm no expert by any means!
In the bouldering community there has also been a bit of an uproar where Emil Abrahammsson (find it on Youtube) did very light static holds 2+ times per day for ~30 seconds if I recall correctly for great tendon strength, this also had some influence on how people train for armwrestling. This style was nicknamed "Abrahangs".
As far as tendons are concerned, they require proactive rehab and you have to load them. There are various loading strategies that a physio is best placed to advise on. Shockwave therapy has also been found to help.
Some pain during tendon loading during rehab is generally expected and not necessarily a negative sign, somewhere around a 4/10 at most.
Recovery is slow in the order of months, not weeks.
There is some evidence that taking a collagen peptide based protein along with vitamin c an hour before loading the tendon can help.
I doubt it, it's not the area where creatine is helpful. It'll influence energy provision which helps your muscles recover, and even be a bit stronger in general. I'm in my 45's but I don't experience tendon or joint pain while lifting (my numbers are not going to impress anybody though, but I do train pretty hard). Were I in your shoes I'd take a trip to the GP to try and find out what the source of your pain is. I am tempted to say I would also start taking creatine, but not if you're increasing your load as a result.
Except for old injuries that never completely healed, you should not be suffering joint pain at your age. For starters, you likely should shift to lighter weights.
A general rule is that, after 26, any muscle or joint injury you suffer will never completely heal. So
- avoid injury scrupulously. Don't accept gym challenges (even your own). Be wary of odd exercises, machines, routines. Don't do anything hard at first, always start easy. Be lazy, build up and take your time: you have the rest of your life. Don't work out while under the influence of alcohol, especially when with friends. I avoid certain sports, e.g., any martial arts, soccer, football, even baseball, b/c the variety of situations(and consequent accidents) is so unpredictable as to be uncontrollable. Sprinting, hurdles, gymnastics and high jump are risky too.
- avoid over-stressing muscles and joints. Keep the cardio up - maybe try the gym classes with music (the crowd is better-looking and friendlier).
- See a doctor if you suffer pain unduly.
- Avoid all toe-lift weight machines and weight sleds (sleds that you push as if pushing a truck) like the plague. Never use them, otherwise you may experience pain so severe it will change your "fight or flee" response to 100% "fight" even in a life-threatening situation. Do NOT challenge this suggestion especially if above the age of 40. Explanation: look up the term "plantar fasciitis".
I anticipate "someday soon" cures for tendon/joint pain but I've been waiting too long to expect their arrival before I die!
Isometric holds. Tendons grow slow and recover slow, generally not as much circulation as muscle.
Big heavy holds will help encourage blood flow without stretching them / stressing them as hard as big lifts.
It seems weird because it goes again ROM ideas, but it has definitely helped protect my arms for rock climbing as well as less fatigue in my legs for big lifts.
I'm going to get yelled at, but eat bacon. Fat is good for tendons. Obviously don't eat immense amounts, but if you're eating none, try eatong a couple of slices on workout days.
It sounds you have the hardest part of it underway - consistency.
There's lots of studies - if you can get over 20g per day it is noticeable to the brain and energy. Adding a few grams a week until you're up there I found it noticeable. 20-30g seems to be a noticeable range.
Supplements aren't always like a coffee spike, they build up and sustain quite well.
20g is a loading dose (typically for a week), then it's 3-5g daily for maintenance. But I've seen studies that 5g daily catches up to the 20g loading dose after about a month.
Yeah pretty much this. I took creatine back in high school/college to build muscle mass. In those days we would load with 20g for a week -> then do 5g for 8 weeks -> cycle off for two weeks -> repeat.
I'm back on it now for endurance sports (trail running + cycling) and the advice is to just take 5g a day and don't worry about cycling off. At 5g/day it takes 4-6 weeks to saturate your muscles.
It does have a noticeable impact on water retention, so this year I cycled off six weeks away from my "A" race and lost 5lbs of water weight. It was a 100 mile mountain ultra so I thought the extra pop on the climbs probably wasn't worth the extra weight over the entire course (but probably was worth it while doing hill reps in training). Next year I'm sticking to shorter stuff where I'll run up more climbs. For those I don't plan to cycle off.
I've taken creatine for 20+ years, nobody does the "loading" dose anymore, or shouldn't be if they still do. Maybe it stills says it on the jars but there was tons of information a decade or more ago that it was deemed as a way to get you to blast through your jug faster. 5g is the normal dose. You're always taking in creatine eating normal meat added meals.
This is giving me flashbacks to using bodybuilding.com forums.. man, long time ago.
It is my 100% always buy supplement. I only have 2 of those now, protein the other. It absolutely helps me think better and feel better throughout the day. Noticeable when I stop taking it. And its dirt cheap. If I had more disposable income I'd have a few others but I went from tons of supplements to basically nothing. I never use PWOs or anything now, even when I do have money.
I haven't seen the 20g loading dose recommendation on anything recently either. Everything I've seen just recommends 5g/daily.
My regular supplements that I've noticed made any difference is: creatine, vitamin D, and fiber. With vitamin C and protein being situational as needed.
I feel the same way about creatine (and increasingly protein).
One thing that might help me notice creatine more is that I haven't drank much caffeine for some reason.. and the longer I've been able to put it off or minimize it, the more of an unfair advantage it has become when I've started.
Heres a question, this threat is interesting and OpenAI is saying they are at AGI with Astra.... so can we give Astra all the papers on creatine, and all the anecdotal evidence in this thread and get it to produce any new insights to answer why people have different experiences, and why theres some reports of it being cancer fighting and why theres some that arent...?
Just feel if we are at AGI, and its amazing then we should be able to do our own research with it on these topics...
With so much publishing fraud, low quality of publishing and bogus peer review, I am hard pressed to believe anything that comes out of these journals. I was highly disappointed after reading about Dana-Farber Cancer Institute publishing fraud that endangered so many people lives. Specially papers with 'dietary' research, which are even more bogus. So if someone says, eat X to reduce chance of cancer, I'd ask them to take X put it back where the sun don’t shine.
Cell is not one of "these journals". Publishing to Cell, Nature, Science used to guarantee tenure track for a young professor although I'm not sure if that's still the case.
I know that used to be the case. But its unfortunately not anymore. I am currently In RF and working on some resonators and waveguides. Recently I had the displeasure of reading some papers from top journals to survey what are some new designs that are being pursued.
I was highly disappointed by the low bar of publishing. No characterisation of design, no repeatability study, no comsol files, no fringe field study. Most of the papers read like "we came up with design, tested it with the lowest hanging usecase and there are the results attached with a basic smith chart we made". How am I supposed to have any confidence in anything that is being published like this . The point of public funded research is so I don’t have to research and I can take that research and use/engineer it. But If this is the output then I am not going to spend money and time to do studies to figure out if someone else's research is viable or not because the peer review is broken and publishing bar is in the grave.
I take creatine almost daily for close to 20 years now. Blood work is always perfect. Hours of strength training, cycling and running every week, though.
This might be the best supplement. People over 40 needs CoQ10 (ubiquinol) as well. The energy boost is crazy (I also combine with PQQ, but it's not really proven). Lugol iodine is also the cheapest best supplement ever.
Your own link shows that what is considered toxic levels are far higher than most people would expect. Vitamin D toxicity is not that easy to accidentally hit.
Overdose has been observed at 1,925 μg/d (77,000 IU per day). Acute overdose requires between 15,000 μg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 μg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over several days to months.
Would you mind providing some examples? I can't say that I'm really up on a lot of psudoscience.
A pretty standard bottle of Vitamin D at 10k IU is 60 capsules/pills/whatever. That's a 2 month supply.
To hit the toxic eventually (77k IU) you would be going through a 2 month supply every ~7 days.
To hit the acute toxicity in days or weeks (low end 600k), your going through that bottle every day.
However, every single time that someone mentions Vitamin D, people jump out of the woodwork about toxicity without ever actually bringing up just how much you have to take as if if you take the 400 IU capsule, going one IU over is going to kill you. I'm also pretty sure that a specific group of denialists shouldn't be counted as a reason to scream warnings from the mountaintops every time someone thinks about Vitamin D.
Sure. This is only going to be anecdotal and sparse examples, but this became a thing post-Covid, primarily as a "natural alternative" to vaccination.
Not just random people on random forums, Joe Rogan several times espoused the value of D along with other usual suspects:
"Rogan said he started feeling ill on Aug. 28 and tested positive the next day. He added he began taking his regimen the same day, which apparently included ivermectin, IV drips of vitamins D and C, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) that helps repair cells, and monoclonal antibodies. He said he felt fine the next day."
"Man Vomits For Months After Taking Vitamin D at Almost 400x Daily Recommended Dose"
And, if you drink a glass of carrot juice a day, you'll receive toxic levels of vitamin A!
~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D [1]. It's not useful to categorize it as some trend, based on people just not following general recommended dosing (with more precise dosing depending entirely on personal sun exposure and skin color).
edit: As an office worker, I take 10k IU per day when I'm entirely indoors (most of the time), but vary it based on sun exposure. I based this on recent studies, and have my doctors approval with an exactly center-of-the-nominal-range vitamin D serum level.
> severe VDD was defined as serum 25(OH)D levels of <25 nmol/L, moderate deficiency as 25–50 nmol/L, insufficiency as 50–75 nmol/L, and sufficiency as >75 nmol/L.
These numbers seem high to me. The 75 nmol/L (30ng/L) is not really a reliable value. It was published in a research that raises many questions due to conflict of interests.
Hence the
> ~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D
becomes:
> ~40% of people in the USA don't get enough vitamin D according to Dr. Holick
Where I live the norm is 20 ng/L and if we apply that, then the shocking 40% becomes more reasonable 10-15%
My doctor added vitamin D test to his patients recurring blood work since the start of COVID, and found out just about all his patients was deficient or near it.
If you don't have a primarily fish based diet or spend hours under direct overhead sunlight every day without a shirt on, you're probably deficient as well.
That's a bit of an exaggeration, Vitamin D does not require hours in the sun:
> Recommendations to Obtain Adequate Amount of Vitamin D.
> Sun exposure to the face, arms, hands, and legs without sunscreen for 5 to 30 minutes at least twice a week or more between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm
Now that's for most people: if you live in Alaska then during the winter maybe you need a litle more or something ... but the point is most people just need a little sun, < 30 minutes twice a week.
I'll say track and test yourself, since it depends highly on skin tone and weather.
That study also claims 12-20ng/mL 25-hydroxyvitamin D is sufficient. My doctor says the post-COVID studies suggest 75ng/mL is closer to optimal, and <30ng/mL had been considered deficient for about a decade before COVID.
Personally I had no problem hitting 20ng/mL through sunlight alone and I'm pretty fair skinned but live somewhere sunny. But I haven't been able to get anywhere near 75ng/mL even when I've made an effort to increase vitamin D through supplements and exposure to the sun.
I've also heard about it 'hardening' in the bloodstream and that you should really be taking it with K2 as well. This is anecdotal so someone please do more research than basing anything from this comment
Roughly, Vitamine D3 make the body effective at extracting calcium from food and dumping it into the bloodstream; vitamin k2 make it easier for the body to use that calcium. Too D3 without K2 can cause hypercalcemia; K2 make it less likely but there is still a point where too much D3 is too much!
And too much D3 without calcium supplements make the body use the calcium from it's bones !
I saw someone handing out samples of creatine at Costco the other day, spouting all sorts of stuff like it's a wonder drug.
It's definitely becoming mainstream.
I've taken it off and on for the past 15 years, the most noticeable effect is about 5lbs of weight gain. I do think it helps gym performance and the increased water retention mames for better muscle definition.
Citation please? Creatine is one of the most studied modern supplements, and I have yet to see anything that says to you'd need to 'take breaks' from it...
Not risks but sideeffects that might affect you. I just decided to cut creatine out during summer months, as I sweat significantly more when on creatine (and pee of course, but that is manageable). Now I already sweat more than average joe based on my genetics (yes, I had that checked out by a doctor) but on creatine it became really annoying during hot season. Since creatine definitely allows me to lift heavier and progress, I will just plan around that and put cutting/maintenance phases into the hot season off-creatine, and go back to supplementing it the rest of the year.
Anecdotally, it makes me feel like crap and significantly increased hair shedding. I've seen attestations of both side effects online as well. No idea how or why it could cause either, and the crumminess at least significantly improved very quickly after stopping it. Neither side effect seems to be especially common though.
I get severe cramping from it (reproducible). All I can find are papers about this being a myth and some reddit threads about other people having this.
I get it too if I don't drink a lot more water. So did many people on my sports team.
Creatine binds to water (making less water available to your muscles) and allows your muscles to work harder (which makes them need more water). So if you're not drinking a lot more water when you're taking creatine, you will get cramps from either dehydration and/or muscle overuse.
But once you're past the loading phase for creatine and getting sufficient hydration, it's supposed to lessen cramps because the water bound to creatine also becomes available for use again as the creatine is used by the body.
My understanding is it's a bit of a bind and release process that moves the water from outside of the muscle cell to inside of it until the cell is saturated or the creatine is consumed.
So the amount of creatine changes the rate as which water is loaded into the cell, but the total amount of water needed is calculated based on your muscle mass. The figures I've seen is 2L extra water (spread evenly, not all at once) for a normally recommended 5g daily creatine intake during loading (which typically takes a month at 5g/day dosage).
I get this unless I drink a lot of water. About 48 fl oz seems to be the right amount for 10g creatine. Sometimes this needs to be combined with a light snack, like a handful of nuts.
Your body can synthesize creatine, so it's not essential, but meat is a source of exogenous creatine and eating it results in higher stored creatine levels, which is slightly good for muscle power endurance in the ~5-15 second effort range. Supplementing produces slightly higher relative improvements in creatine levels in vegetarians and vegans than it does in people who eat meat.
I'm a vegan, and I'm surprised this is downvoted, because it's true. There are plenty of things that you need to be careful to not become deficient in on a vegan diet: protein (in appropriate amino acid balances), creatine, b12, the good Omega 3s (from algae preferably; flax is missing DHA entirely), calcium, iron, to name a few.
You're fine if you take daily algae oil, multivitamin, iron supplement, calcium, and creatine (without going overboard on any of it) and making sure to get lots of protein from balanced sources (eating a ton of soy is actually not a bad idea, because it's a balanced protein), but I wouldn't recommend somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about their nutrition to go vegan. Enough omnivores are already deficient in vitamins and minerals, and veganism only makes it harder.
Well, if vegetarians and those of the Vegan religion don't get enough creatine it is most likely related to them not partaking of an important source of the substance: meat.
Not vouching for creatine, but in general, humans get some vital nutrients from animal consumption. Vegans have to take some B-vitamins for best health due to what they don't get from meat. I assume creatine is the same.
Where do those animals get their B12 from, do you think? (Hint: they don't synthesize it either, they get it from their diet)
Today, because our food / water are so sterilized (good thing!), we don't typically get much bacterial B12 from unclean root vegetables, drinking from streams, etc. So yes, we need to supplement today. Because of advances in cleanliness.
Interesting, I wonder how that is related? Do you believe you are getting hearing loss because you are retaining more water, or because you are dehydrated from retaining more water elsewhere in the body with the same intake rate? Does this go away if you were taking creatine and drinking more water? Or does it come up if you simply drink more water?
Excessively large doses make your stomach and perhaps your kidneys unhappy and supplements being lightly regulated there may be purity issues where the risk is what else is in it.
Near as I can parse it, as a very, very anti-woo person, is as follows:
In a healthy individual with a balanced diet and no deficiencies, there are essentially zero supplements that do anything whatsoever to a measurable degree. Essentially the entire supplement aisle at Whole Foods or whatever is completely woo and useless, and any advertisements are someone trying to make money from you, or some mindless viral craze with no evidence. The exception to this general rule is omega 3s (fish oil is great for this, algae oil is even better given potential heavy metals in fish), protein supplementation if you're weightlifting, and creatine. GLP-1s are a wonder drug that are great if you are not a healthy individual and wish to be.
I'd like to try a low dose GLP-1 for inflammation benefits but I'm not overweight (5'-9" 162 lbs) so I don't think I could buy it.
That said, a little appetite suppression would be nice. I spend too much of my day thinking about food and that's annoying... For the past couple of years (I'm 56) my cravings for food have skyrocketed and if I ate as often or as much as I want to, I'd pack on weight fast.
A few years ago I did start taking 300 mg of nicotinamide riboside daily and that has helped quite a bit with inflammation.
Please remember that this is a study not the ads and pop-sci articles usually posted here. That means it’s meant to elucidate at most some biological pathways and not to present an overall recommendation. Maybe creatine has strong anti-tumor activity through one pathway and strongly tumor-promoting impacts elsewhere.
Please… just read it as the isolated and interesting insight into biology that it is. It’s a fascinating in vitro result that shows a potentially important role for creatinine in a certain immune response.
As it turns out, no one lets you generate mutant human embryos with deficient creatine receptors, grow them up into adult humans, inject them with melanoma, euthanize them and harvest the tumor cell mass and bone marrow for analysis.
Now I am imagining a 501-C where school children are encouraged to read studies to mice. Children get better at reading technical papers, mice learn more about their options! Win Win!
- Loo et al. 2015 found color cancer cells can use it as fuel and blocking the creatine cut metastasis in mice [0]
- zhang et al 20921 found it promoting mouse colon and breast cancer models [1]
not an expert in any way, but i’m guessing it depends on cancer type and there doesn’t seem to be human data either way. as a cautious person w a lot of familial cancer, i cycled off after i looked into it.
[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009
What is blowing my mind though is that at $dayjob my team is going through a crazy crunch to deliver a very strategic project and some of us are pushing 10-12h days often. I'm in hour 12 today for the second day in a row, and my head is not tired at all. Turns out the brain also uses a lot of ATP too, specially during demanding cognitive tasks so I guess it is creatine that is keeping the engine running smoothly even after so many hours.
I will like once every week or two have a poor night sleep. These days I take twice the dose and I don't feel like I'm sleep deprived at all. Feels like cheating! And apparently no side effects at all so far. Well, maybe I'm working too much.
One of the things I'm trying to do better lately is to have a good sleep hygiene. Sun in the eyes early in the morning, no caffeine for the first 60 waking minutes of the day (adenosine absorption period), no screens 2 hours before bed and whatnot. Still, some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps
Edit: Typo
I suspect creatine is responsible for me not being able to get back to sleep easily, because once I'm awake, I'm awake.
I take creatine daily but when I'm working out more than a couple of weeks, i feel much better than on weeks when I skip working out.
from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42578920/ (CrM is creatine monohydrate)
And how do you know it's the creatine and not ...taking up CrossFit and the benefits to energy and cognitive function exercize brings?
I’ve previously stopped taking it for a couple months and noticed no real difference in physical or mental ability.
But inversely, unless you actually go above 10, eg 15... The blood saturation isn't enough for your brain to take advantage of it.
But there is very little studied about sustained use of such a dosage.
It's safe enough for anecdotes of people doing it for years and not having issues - but despite others claiming that it's well studied, it's really not - at least not with dosages above 5g in humans.
The GI issues are caused by the creatine absorbing water. This causes your gut to have more water than usual as it follows the creatine through the works… which causes… urgency.
The effect diminishes after you’ve been taking a regular dose for a while, even with just monogydrate (not HCL).
Some people say HCL causes less distress because it doesn’t draw water as much. Others argue that defeats the purpose of taking it.
Monohydrate is studied to death and proven effective, HCL not so much.
But otherwise, I'd agree that monohydrate has significantly more research behind it and I'd default to that if it's tolerable.
I've been taking it for almost a month and I plan to stop to see if I notice any change back that would make me want to start taking creatine again.
It has replaced in some ways caffeine for me.
The part of where creatine wipes out sleep deficit sounded like a stretch, but it definitely helps.
So, creatine = good?
Title:
> Creatine promotes cancer metastasis through activation of Smad2/3
Tldr is basically that creatine helps body cells (in rats) to grow. Regardless wherever they're bad (cancer) or good (muscle). At least that's how I understood that study the last time I came across it. So probably stop using creatine when you've a cancer that's growing. Or its liable to use the creatine to turbocharge it's growth
> …and support the use of creatine supplementation as a strategy to augment DC-based cancer immunotherapy.
So it seems that from this research the outcome is indeed creatine = good
Creatine uptake promotes dendritic cell activation and enhances antitumor immunity
I honestly don't know whether it made a difference. Sleep didn't get worse, no noticeable metabolic effects. Possibly the "perma tired muscles" I've been suffering from increasingly since about age 57 (I'm an active cyclist) have gotten a bit better, with <50% of days affected rather than >90% last year, but even that is subjective.
If "taking the stuff" means "more uptake" (does it?) and there are other beneficial effects, bring it on.
It's safe, cheap, and long-term-study proven to be extremely effective.
You will want to increase your daily hydration (at least for otherwise healthy men, a good sign is that you're "peeing clear") as Creatine does increase water retention.
In the bouldering community there has also been a bit of an uproar where Emil Abrahammsson (find it on Youtube) did very light static holds 2+ times per day for ~30 seconds if I recall correctly for great tendon strength, this also had some influence on how people train for armwrestling. This style was nicknamed "Abrahangs".
As far as tendons are concerned, they require proactive rehab and you have to load them. There are various loading strategies that a physio is best placed to advise on. Shockwave therapy has also been found to help.
Some pain during tendon loading during rehab is generally expected and not necessarily a negative sign, somewhere around a 4/10 at most.
Recovery is slow in the order of months, not weeks.
There is some evidence that taking a collagen peptide based protein along with vitamin c an hour before loading the tendon can help.
A general rule is that, after 26, any muscle or joint injury you suffer will never completely heal. So
- avoid injury scrupulously. Don't accept gym challenges (even your own). Be wary of odd exercises, machines, routines. Don't do anything hard at first, always start easy. Be lazy, build up and take your time: you have the rest of your life. Don't work out while under the influence of alcohol, especially when with friends. I avoid certain sports, e.g., any martial arts, soccer, football, even baseball, b/c the variety of situations(and consequent accidents) is so unpredictable as to be uncontrollable. Sprinting, hurdles, gymnastics and high jump are risky too.
- avoid over-stressing muscles and joints. Keep the cardio up - maybe try the gym classes with music (the crowd is better-looking and friendlier).
- See a doctor if you suffer pain unduly.
- Avoid all toe-lift weight machines and weight sleds (sleds that you push as if pushing a truck) like the plague. Never use them, otherwise you may experience pain so severe it will change your "fight or flee" response to 100% "fight" even in a life-threatening situation. Do NOT challenge this suggestion especially if above the age of 40. Explanation: look up the term "plantar fasciitis".
I anticipate "someday soon" cures for tendon/joint pain but I've been waiting too long to expect their arrival before I die!
Big heavy holds will help encourage blood flow without stretching them / stressing them as hard as big lifts.
It seems weird because it goes again ROM ideas, but it has definitely helped protect my arms for rock climbing as well as less fatigue in my legs for big lifts.
It sounds you have the hardest part of it underway - consistency.
There's lots of studies - if you can get over 20g per day it is noticeable to the brain and energy. Adding a few grams a week until you're up there I found it noticeable. 20-30g seems to be a noticeable range.
Supplements aren't always like a coffee spike, they build up and sustain quite well.
I'm back on it now for endurance sports (trail running + cycling) and the advice is to just take 5g a day and don't worry about cycling off. At 5g/day it takes 4-6 weeks to saturate your muscles.
It does have a noticeable impact on water retention, so this year I cycled off six weeks away from my "A" race and lost 5lbs of water weight. It was a 100 mile mountain ultra so I thought the extra pop on the climbs probably wasn't worth the extra weight over the entire course (but probably was worth it while doing hill reps in training). Next year I'm sticking to shorter stuff where I'll run up more climbs. For those I don't plan to cycle off.
If you're only after the lifting benefits, 3-5g/day is sufficient.
This is giving me flashbacks to using bodybuilding.com forums.. man, long time ago.
It is my 100% always buy supplement. I only have 2 of those now, protein the other. It absolutely helps me think better and feel better throughout the day. Noticeable when I stop taking it. And its dirt cheap. If I had more disposable income I'd have a few others but I went from tons of supplements to basically nothing. I never use PWOs or anything now, even when I do have money.
My regular supplements that I've noticed made any difference is: creatine, vitamin D, and fiber. With vitamin C and protein being situational as needed.
One thing that might help me notice creatine more is that I haven't drank much caffeine for some reason.. and the longer I've been able to put it off or minimize it, the more of an unfair advantage it has become when I've started.
Dosing for gym exercise is different than dosing for excess creatine to reach the brain.
Well studied, checked with my doctor, including for TBI. Obviously everyone should check for themselves.
Cerebral Creatine levels seem to be a different thing.
Creatine and TBI:
https://health.mil/Reference-Center/Publications/2025/09/25/...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209321/
Creatine supplementation for naturally declining creatine levels:
https://jpbs.hapres.com/htmls/JPBS_1766_Detail.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10526554/
And then there were the discoveries of creatine in the brain in studies.
Just feel if we are at AGI, and its amazing then we should be able to do our own research with it on these topics...
This might be the best supplement. People over 40 needs CoQ10 (ubiquinol) as well. The energy boost is crazy (I also combine with PQQ, but it's not really proven). Lugol iodine is also the cheapest best supplement ever.
This is vague and doesn't explain anything. Can you share any references that communicate what you're thinking about?
It became something of a panacea nutrient, recently around COVID.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity
Overdose has been observed at 1,925 μg/d (77,000 IU per day). Acute overdose requires between 15,000 μg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 μg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over several days to months.
Unless, as mentioned, it had some traction as a cure all around the time of COVID.
This happens periodically and is again happening with vitamin C (which, whatever, getting to any dangerous amount might be physically impossible).
A pretty standard bottle of Vitamin D at 10k IU is 60 capsules/pills/whatever. That's a 2 month supply.
To hit the toxic eventually (77k IU) you would be going through a 2 month supply every ~7 days. To hit the acute toxicity in days or weeks (low end 600k), your going through that bottle every day.
However, every single time that someone mentions Vitamin D, people jump out of the woodwork about toxicity without ever actually bringing up just how much you have to take as if if you take the 400 IU capsule, going one IU over is going to kill you. I'm also pretty sure that a specific group of denialists shouldn't be counted as a reason to scream warnings from the mountaintops every time someone thinks about Vitamin D.
Sure. This is only going to be anecdotal and sparse examples, but this became a thing post-Covid, primarily as a "natural alternative" to vaccination.
Not just random people on random forums, Joe Rogan several times espoused the value of D along with other usual suspects:
"Rogan said he started feeling ill on Aug. 28 and tested positive the next day. He added he began taking his regimen the same day, which apparently included ivermectin, IV drips of vitamins D and C, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) that helps repair cells, and monoclonal antibodies. He said he felt fine the next day."
"Man Vomits For Months After Taking Vitamin D at Almost 400x Daily Recommended Dose"
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220706/e28098Hypervitami...
https://www.sciencealert.com/man-overdoses-vomits-for-months...
Also unsurprisingly happened more often around this time with infants:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10....
~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D [1]. It's not useful to categorize it as some trend, based on people just not following general recommended dosing (with more precise dosing depending entirely on personal sun exposure and skin color).
edit: As an office worker, I take 10k IU per day when I'm entirely indoors (most of the time), but vary it based on sun exposure. I based this on recent studies, and have my doctors approval with an exactly center-of-the-nominal-range vitamin D serum level.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9573946/
These numbers seem high to me. The 75 nmol/L (30ng/L) is not really a reliable value. It was published in a research that raises many questions due to conflict of interests.
Hence the
> ~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D
becomes:
> ~40% of people in the USA don't get enough vitamin D according to Dr. Holick
Where I live the norm is 20 ng/L and if we apply that, then the shocking 40% becomes more reasonable 10-15%
0: https://drink4good.com/can-drinking-too-much-carrot-juice-tu...
If you don't have a primarily fish based diet or spend hours under direct overhead sunlight every day without a shirt on, you're probably deficient as well.
> Recommendations to Obtain Adequate Amount of Vitamin D.
> Sun exposure to the face, arms, hands, and legs without sunscreen for 5 to 30 minutes at least twice a week or more between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8299926/
Now that's for most people: if you live in Alaska then during the winter maybe you need a litle more or something ... but the point is most people just need a little sun, < 30 minutes twice a week.
That study also claims 12-20ng/mL 25-hydroxyvitamin D is sufficient. My doctor says the post-COVID studies suggest 75ng/mL is closer to optimal, and <30ng/mL had been considered deficient for about a decade before COVID.
Personally I had no problem hitting 20ng/mL through sunlight alone and I'm pretty fair skinned but live somewhere sunny. But I haven't been able to get anywhere near 75ng/mL even when I've made an effort to increase vitamin D through supplements and exposure to the sun.
In Calgary, it's almost half the year that you basically cannot rely on the sun at all for vitamin D.
And too much D3 without calcium supplements make the body use the calcium from it's bones !
This doesn't mean you can just pound it, but for the most part it just becomes waste product.
It's definitely becoming mainstream.
I've taken it off and on for the past 15 years, the most noticeable effect is about 5lbs of weight gain. I do think it helps gym performance and the increased water retention mames for better muscle definition.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009
More accessible video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcMgHncZVIw
That being said some people do have adverse effects to supplementation, e.g. excessive water retention, bloating, stomach discomfort, &c.
So try it, if you have a bad reaction stop.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3...
Creatine binds to water (making less water available to your muscles) and allows your muscles to work harder (which makes them need more water). So if you're not drinking a lot more water when you're taking creatine, you will get cramps from either dehydration and/or muscle overuse.
But once you're past the loading phase for creatine and getting sufficient hydration, it's supposed to lessen cramps because the water bound to creatine also becomes available for use again as the creatine is used by the body.
But the cramps are really debilitating, as in random back muscle locks up debilitating, so I thought it best to just give up on this.
So the amount of creatine changes the rate as which water is loaded into the cell, but the total amount of water needed is calculated based on your muscle mass. The figures I've seen is 2L extra water (spread evenly, not all at once) for a normally recommended 5g daily creatine intake during loading (which typically takes a month at 5g/day dosage).
You're fine if you take daily algae oil, multivitamin, iron supplement, calcium, and creatine (without going overboard on any of it) and making sure to get lots of protein from balanced sources (eating a ton of soy is actually not a bad idea, because it's a balanced protein), but I wouldn't recommend somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about their nutrition to go vegan. Enough omnivores are already deficient in vitamins and minerals, and veganism only makes it harder.
Today, because our food / water are so sterilized (good thing!), we don't typically get much bacterial B12 from unclean root vegetables, drinking from streams, etc. So yes, we need to supplement today. Because of advances in cleanliness.
But it's pretty safe at recommended doses.
I would be highly sceptical of the claim "antitumor immunity". It sounds like an ad.
(I regret posting that blog post, but the study and discussion is interesting)
In a healthy individual with a balanced diet and no deficiencies, there are essentially zero supplements that do anything whatsoever to a measurable degree. Essentially the entire supplement aisle at Whole Foods or whatever is completely woo and useless, and any advertisements are someone trying to make money from you, or some mindless viral craze with no evidence. The exception to this general rule is omega 3s (fish oil is great for this, algae oil is even better given potential heavy metals in fish), protein supplementation if you're weightlifting, and creatine. GLP-1s are a wonder drug that are great if you are not a healthy individual and wish to be.
That said, a little appetite suppression would be nice. I spend too much of my day thinking about food and that's annoying... For the past couple of years (I'm 56) my cravings for food have skyrocketed and if I ate as often or as much as I want to, I'd pack on weight fast.
A few years ago I did start taking 300 mg of nicotinamide riboside daily and that has helped quite a bit with inflammation.
Please… just read it as the isolated and interesting insight into biology that it is. It’s a fascinating in vitro result that shows a potentially important role for creatinine in a certain immune response.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_creatine_deficiency
> Notably, creatine uptake similarly boosted the activation and immunostimulatory function of human monocyte-derived DCs.
Source: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Mice